Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Best movie of this year hands down!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

"Children of a Lesser God" reveals a little from its title and the word 'God' is quite misleading. So there are chances that Randa Haines' film doesn't meet your expectations, and I mean that in a positive way. I, myself, didn't know exactly what the film was about; it could be as much about a priest, or a missionary working in an orphan, but the story surprised me, in a very pleasant way.For all I knew, the film starred William Hurt and his then-girlfriend, the actress Marlee Matlin. As a good movie geek, I knew she won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, but it didn't leave many indications about the role she played, except the most crucial one: being a deaf actress, she could only play a character suffering from this handicap. Given that, while I was watching the opening sequence, William Hurt as James Leeds, a newly hired speech teacher for the deaf and his first class, I could see coming the inspirational film about the teacher with unconventional methods. Leeds was teaching a group of young teenagers not to rely too much on signing, but instead to learn about lip-reading and the pronunciation of basic sounds in order to face some real-life situations. Some of them are very receptive and seem to learn quickly, maybe too quickly, but in a way, it states that there are various degrees of deafness, there are two other pupils suffering from severer cases who don't participate.Later, Leeds encounters Sarah Norman, a young woman who preferred to stay at the school. She was there since the age of seven, when her parents put her, thinking she was retarded. Sarah is not just beautiful, looking at the way she signs; it's obvious that she has quite a temper, a personality that doesn't leave Leeds indifferent. He'll learn that she never talked and doesn't intend to. At that moment, we're left with the perfect ingredients of a teacher movie and the story of someone who overcomes a handicap to face the adversity of life and all that stuff. Leeds would teach Sarah to speak, to communicate like the other pupils. She refuses, he insists, but when she refuses again, he gives up, and that's a clever twist. The film uses predictable material but magnificently transcends it by delivering something deeper and more emotionally challenging. Leeds is not interested in Sarah because he wants to help her, but because he is in love with her, and "Children of a Lesser God" unveils its core: it's a romance, and quite a beautiful one. Yet the film never exploits the romance to ignore Sarah's deafness, which would be unrealistic but also impossible because the sign language is omnipresent. However, it can be debated whether it's fitting or realistic that Leeds translates into words everything she says. The script provides a reasonable answer during a restaurant sequence when Leeds says he likes to hear himself talk. I take it as a satisfying answer because I can believe a man who'd deal with deaf people on a daily basis would love to inhabit his place with his own voice, it might also reveal a sort of egoistical side behind his altruistic nature, but I think it fits the character, slightly pompous at times. But I also accept the criticism about the film being sometimes too noisy for a story about the deaf, while it could have been an opportunity to plunge in this world of silence. The film can be criticized for only adapting usual romantic situations to one handicap, but that criticism, in my opinion, is invalidated by the basis of Leeds and Sarah's relationship.Yes, the film was more about Leeds helping Sarah to penetrate his world, while Sarah's anger and torment, and this was magnificently portrayed by Marlee Matlin, was to convince people, much more the man she loves, to stop seeing her as a case to study or someone to help. As long as she's perceived as a deaf woman, she stops being herself in the sense that she's only seen through the perceptions of other people, not her perception. But what I love about Leeds' character is the way he reacts, he's not moved by this speech, he doesn't fall into the convenient trap of sentimentality and pretend that Sarah doesn't have a handicap. In the pivotal scene, when she's invited to a reunion of deaf people, Leeds is uncomfortable, and so are we. He's not denying the positive and cathartic aspect of such reunions, but he'd never adopt silence as a referential state because he loves Sarah. On the contrary, it's because he loves her that he tells her the truth, and refuses to let her drown in her existential torment.Sarah is far from the noble victim and Leeds is not the good Samaritan either, here is a stubborn woman who refuses to play Leeds' game and here's a man who can't lie to himself, he considers deafness as a handicap for communication, for confrontation and for such trivial things as listening to music. One of his biggest goals is to make his pupils enjoy and feel the music, and his incapability to 'show the music' to Sarah betrays a huge desperation is his heart. "Children of a Lesser God" centers on a remarkable couple, full of anger and passion, challenging every single cinematic stereotype. At one crucial scene, they have an argument and suddenly, Sarah is so turned she wants to make love. The script remarkably challenges all the expectations even in the smallest details, dealing with deafness with less condescending sentimentality than other movies would.Some would say that subtitles would have been more useful than words. Maybe it would have made the climactic moment more impacting, but I guess the film could grab more audience this way, I wouldn't blame it for that, especially when it has such a thought-provoking script and profound romance to give us.

Randa Haines 'Children of a Lesser God' is a Complex story, told in a mature manner. What also stands tall in this rather unique love-story, are it's performances by it's lead stars.'Children Of A Lesser God' tells the story of a speech teacher at a school for deaf students, who falls in love with a deaf woman who also works there.Though a love-story without any response half the time, this romantic-drama packs in some truly heartfelt moments. The writing in the first hour is superb. But dips in the second hour for a while, but a mature & real culmination makes up for it. Randa Haines understands this human story with maturity and her direction is perfect. Cinematography is good, so is the Editing.Now to the performances! 'Children Of A Lesser God' would've been soul-less if not for it's performances. Marlee Matlin is Stunning in her Oscar & Golden-Globe-Winning Performance. She speaks through her eyes, and conveys all the emotions inside her. William Hurt is restrained all through. Piper Laurie is first-rate and leaves a strong impression. Philip Bosco is good.On the whole, 'Children Of A Lesser God' is A Good Watch, without a shed of doubt. If it had a better second hour, I would have given this story a proper 9 on 10, nonetheless, I had an experience worth reviewing.

Directed by Randa Haines,Children Of A Lesser God is based on the stage play by Mark Medoff.Medoff along with Hesper Anderson wrote the screenplay resulting in one of the most beautiful films of the 1980's.It deals frankly with the complexities and frustrations associated with deafness and looks at how some deaf people are happy as they are and don't want to use their voices to speak.Sign language teacher James Leeds(William Hurt)travels to a fishing town in America,to take up a teaching position at their school for deaf youngsters.He encounters opposition with some students,because he encourages them to use their voices as well as just signing.He meets the school cleaner,Sarah Norman(Marlee Matlin who is hearing impaired herself)who used to be one of the schools brightest and most promising students.Trying to figure out why she didn't go on to better things,James realises he is falling in love with her.At first resistant and hostile towards him,Sarah soon shares his feelings.So begins an emotional journey,as they try to find a way to live together unhindered by both speech and deafness.Highlights include James teaching his students to speak and sing(they eventually put on a musical show),James and Sarah dancing in a restaurant and the famous swimming pool scene,which allows James to get a feel of what the world is like for Sarah on a daily basis.Marlee won(and completely deserved it)the best actress Oscar for her breathtaking performance as Sarah.At times Hurts translation of her ferocious signing is not needed,because we clearly understand her meaning as it's conveyed with so much emotion in her face.Hurt who I find to be a very subtle actor,is simply brilliant.His love and desperation conveyed perfectly without ever going over the top.There's also fine support from Philip Bosco as Sarah's former teacher and Piper Laurie as Sarah's mother.An uplifting and beautiful love story with a highly spirited main character who is unforgettable.Powerful performances and a haunting score by Michael Convertino all add to the power of the film.This is an experience that can't be easily explained,it's a film you have to see for yourself and become wrapped up in,you won't be disappointed.

So, this movie has been hailed, glorified, and carried to incredible heights. But in the end what is it really? Many of the ways in which it has been made to work for a hearing audience on the screen do not work. The fairly academic camera work keeps the signing obfuscated, and scenes that are in ASL are hard to follow as a result even for someone who is relatively fluent. The voice interpretation of Matlin's dialogue, under the excuse that Hurt's character "likes the sound of his voice", turns her more and more into a weird distant object as the film goes on. Matlin does shine in the few scenes where her signing is not partially hidden from view. But nonetheless, most of the movie, when this is a love story, is only showed from a single point of view, that of the man. As Ebert said, "If a story is about the battle of two people over the common ground on which they will communicate, it's not fair to make the whole movie on the terms of only one of them."The idea that an oralist teacher who uses methods that have been imposed in many deaf schools for decades would be presented as "revolutionary" is fairly insulting in itself. His character becomes weakened as a credible teacher as the movie goes on. Drawing comedy from a deaf accent is, quite honestly, rather low. And his attitude towards the male students of his class is pretty symptomatic of how he seems to act with women: as an entitled man. A party scene involving a number of deaf people including a few academics meeting together leaves him seemingly isolated, in a way that's fairly inconsistent with his credentials: I have seen interpreters spontaneously switch to asl between each other even when they weren't aware of a deaf person being in the area, and yet somehow he feels like a fish out of the water in an environment his education should have made him perfectly used to. As a lover, he seems like a typical dogged nice guy, including his tendency to act possessively afterwards. And yet the movie is, indeed, only really seen through him, as everything his lover says is filtered through his voice. The scenes involving the other deaf kids are, in general, wallbangers. The broken symbolism fails, the dance scene, the pool scene, even the initial sleep scene which is supposed to carry some of it - all these scenes that try to hint at the isolation of the deaf main character are broken metaphors, at best: many hearing people I know do dance on the bass beats that deaf people feel (instead of squirming like copulating chihuahuas), and going to take an evening dive for a hearing person is rarely an excuse to make a deep statement on the isolation of deafness (no, seriously, when I go swim, I go swim)...It also fails at carrying the end of the play, instead making it a story of a deaf woman who submits to a strong man. Even though the original play ended with a more equal ground, where both have to accept each other as they are, and where he has to finally recognize her real voice is the movement of her hands, not the vibrations in her throat.And for all the breakthrough that it may have seemed to be, Marlee Matlin remains Hollywood's token deaf woman to this day.